St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
Year B/Proper 12: John 6:1-21
July 28, 2024
Who, what, why, when, where and how. These are the six foundational questions that any journalist would seek to answer when writing a story. My years in journalism embedded within me a natural curiosity for answering those basic questions, and really comes in handy when exegeting scripture.
Today’s passage in the sixth chapter of John is the miracle of Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000. The scene is set on the other side of the Sea of Galilee in the daytime. The festival of the Passover was near and news of Jesus’ miraculous healing power had spread like wildfire and the crowds following him grew. One commentator estimated that the number, including women and children, was nearly 20,000 people including women and children. As the wave of people approached Jesus, for healing,[1] he retreated to a mountain to be alone with his disciples and to feed them with his teaching.
Jesus tested his disciple, Philip, and asked, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Apparently, Philip interpreted Jesus’ question as, “How are we to buy bread?” to which Philip responded that it was impossible; they did not have money to buy enough—not even six months’ wages would come close. Jesus asked a “where” question and Philip answered a “how” question that was never asked, by the way.
Andrew chimed in, noticing the boy with five barley loaves and two fish, but also concluded that feeding thousands of people would be impossible. Had Philip and Andrew actually answered Jesus’ question—“Where are we to buy bread?” they might have realized that the solution to the impossible was standing before them. When Jesus asked, “Where are we to buy bread?” Philip might have answered, “Jesus, you will provide the bread.”
Jesus had anticipated that people, who had been traveling long distances, would inevitably be hungry. In act of compassion and hospitality, Jesus took the limited resources of the five loaves and the two fish, and produced supernatural abundance, in response to human need that had not yet been made manifest. Through Jesus’ divine provision of food for temporal, bodily hunger, those who were fed also experienced being filled with the spiritual food of Jesus himself, the bread of heaven. When the people witnessed Jesus’ sign, they recognized him as the prophet who was to come into the world, they attempted to take him by force as their king. For the second time, Jesus withdrew to the mountain. This time, Jesus was by himself.
Jesus’ spiritual intervention, through this miraculous sign of abundance, was the response to the human condition of suffering, which is a state of the soul, not of the body. While the people sought Jesus’ healing from bodily sickness, Jesus fed their bodily hunger, knowing that they were unaware that they were starving for so much more.
When human beings feel a sense of lack or emptiness, we are a lot like empty stomachs that growl loudly until nourishment is provided to satisfy the hunger. The difference between bodily hunger and spiritual hunger is that bodily hunger cannot be denied; without food, the human body will die. Spiritual hunger, however, can go undetected and denied. For some, that denial leads to a lifetime of spiritual starvation and a chronic state of being hangry (the unsettling combination of hungry and angry). For those who do realize a deep sense of emptiness within, many have no idea where to look for nourishment, where they can get the living bread that obliterates all spiritual hunger.
This is where you and I come in as the living instruments of God’s freely-given grace. When we encounter starving souls seeking nourishment, and they don’t know where they must go to feed their deep soul’s hunger, remember that the questions borne of hopelessness are not “where” or “how” questions, but “who” questions. From whom are we to get bread for the nourishment of all of God’s people’s souls? The answer is Jesus, who with God and the Holy Spirit, gives us mere mortals the gift of hope in possibility. We are to freely share with those who suffer with hopelessness, caused by sin, loneliness, grief, guilt, despair and countless spiritual afflictions.
Our faith in Jesus Christ assures us of God’s abiding presence and divine provision. That assurance empowers us to dig for hope where there appears to be none; and to envision possibility where there appears to be impossibility.
In 2016, this ministry of planting a new church in Wesley Chapel required the kind of visionary thinking, and hope in possibility, that Jesus modeled for his disciples. Instead of functioning with the mindset of scarcity, in response to what we did not see or have, the early pioneers of this faith community walked by faith and not by sight. The hope of Christ within us, fueled me, and all of you who have come along on this journey throughout these years.
Certainly, there have been challenging times throughout St. Paul’s “becoming.” I firmly believe that none of us, including me, would be here today if we didn’t believe that the possibility of a new faith community, which was once invisible, could indeed become visible. We believe in the hope that through this faith community, it would be possible for an individual to live toward a new version of themselves which they could not yet imagine. We believe that through this community, one could encounter the possibility of surrendering to the frightening, ever-present uncertainty that necessarily deepens one’s trust in God alone.
Because of this divine depth of vision, we must boldly respond to the spiritual food insecurity beyond the church building by bringing Christ’s light and bearing Christ’s hope in this dark, despairing and spiritually-starved world, so that those who seek to hunger no more will be led to Jesus, the one who is, at once, the bread of life and the one who provides that same bread. Like the disciples who witnessed Jesus’ miraculous sign of abundance, we, too, are living witnesses of miracles taking place in the world, and right here within this faith community.
When this church planting sea inevitably becomes rough, and we’ve wearied from years of rowing, it is Jesus who walks on that rough sea and comes near to us, whispering, “It is I, do not be afraid” (v. 21). Friends, we do well to remember that we are powerless to do anything apart from Jesus. We need God to powerfully move within us to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.[2] May we cling to the hope in possibility that Jesus Christ gives, and is, and may we walk faithfully toward the hope that is in each of us as we grow into the full stature of Christ. Amen.
[1] Hare, Douglas R. A. Matthew: Interpretation. John Knox Press, 1993.
[2] Ephesians 3:20
